1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telephone devices for the hearing impaired.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are a variety of prior art devices utilized by the hearing impaired to allow the use of the telephone exchange systems to pass characters between two parties. Essentially, the voice path is used like network wiring to allow a real-time textual dialog as opposed to a voice dialog. These devices are known as text teletype writer (TTY) devices.
TTY devices will typically include an acoustic coupling system which can be physically coupled to a telephone handset, so that a standard telephone microphone and speaker are utilized to pass character strings between a standard telephone and a TTY device.
As a consequence, many of the modern advances in telephony are unavailable to the hearing impaired.